a poet's notebook

18 July 2010

Parking Lot

If you leave the asphalt, what you have is dust and heat. Lever it out. Add soil, seed and water.

Now you have buds, bugs, and birds. Squirrels, field mice, worms, slugs. Shade, and shadows that shiver with breeze. Finches, sparrows, juncos, chickadees, nuthatches. Crows, cats and kestrels.

If your life has been stilled, or stalled, you can sit at a window and watch these other lives unfold. Fledglings quarrel at the fountain. A hawk takes a songbird right before your eyes.

Spiders cast their nets across the window well, up the junction of fence and wall. Some days the garden buzzes and flashes with erotic energy -- squirrels in a tumble of tails, gold pollen dusting leaves, yellow butterflies flickering like light in the vines.

A strong wind, a blizzard of rose petals, drifting pink and white in the flower beds. On a warm day, your brain is scent-dazzled.